Inside Indie Bookstores: Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi

And now he endows a great
fellowship for emerging southern writers here at Ole Miss.
Correct. And he did that because he
wanted to try to build on what Willie did with all the people he brought in.

Speaking of nurturing young writers,I once heard that when Larry
Brown was working as a firefighter he came into the store and asked you whom he
should read.
Nah.

Is that not correct?
No. [Laughter.]

Was he already writing on his own?
Firemen work twenty-four hours and
then they're off for forty-eight hours. And then they're back on for
twenty-four and they're off for forty-eight. So all firemen have other jobs.
They're usually painters or carpenters or builders or something. Larry worked
at a grocery store. He was also a plasterer; he was a Sheetrock guy; he was a
painter; he was a carpenter. He did all of this stuff. And he'd always been a
pretty big reader. Larry's mother, especially, was a really big reader of
romance novels. So Larry had this idea that he could supplement his income by
writing a book that would make money. And he would go to the Lafayette County
Public Library and check out books on how to be a writer, how to get your book
published. He went through all of those. And I think he read that you start by
getting published in magazines, so then he began to read magazines—fiction
especially. He would read Harper's and Esquire. Larry was
a complete omnivore of music and film and literature.

He took it all in.
Took it all in and he had an
incredible memory. You would talk about a movie; he knew the producer, the
director, the actor, the actresses, the location; music, the song, the group,
who was on bass, the drums. On and on and on. And at some point, yes, early on,
he came into the store. When I first opened the store, I was the only person
who worked there. So I was talking to everyone who came in. And we started
talking and, you know, I didn't give him a reading list and say, "Read these
ten books and that'll make you a writer." Larry was already reading Raymond
Carver and Harry Crews. Cormac McCarthy very early, long before Cormac broke
out. Flannery O'Connor. So we talked about those authors, but Larry completely
found his own way. He was completely self-taught. And I did later on help him
in a specific way when he was kind of stuck. But he would've gotten out of the
jam that he thought he was in at the time.

What was that?
Well, he had had one or two stories
published and then he kind of couldn't get anything else published. He kept
sending off these short stories and they kept coming back. Then he called me
one day—and, you know, I hadn't read anything he'd written, hadn't asked to; I
don't go there with writers unless they ask me. It was a Sunday. He said, "I
don't know what else to do. I'm sorry I'm calling you, I don't mean to bother
you, but I think I must be doing something wrong. Everything's coming back." I
said, "Larry, I'd be happy to read them. Bring me a few of your stories. I'm no
editor or agent or anything, but I'd be willing to read them."

So he came over
with a manila folder. It was raining outside. We sat down at the dining room
table and I opened this folder. He was sitting right across from me, and I just
started reading. The first story was "Facing the Music." You know, I read maybe
four pages and I said, "Larry, this is an incredible story. You're not doing
anything wrong." And then I finished reading it and chills went down my spine.
Because I knew that it was a great story. It still is a great story. And I told
him, "This is going to be published. I don't know when, I don't know where,
just don't despair." Actually I was looking the other day at a note he'd sent
me. He thanked me for helping to make it better, that specific story. But I
don't remember what that was. I may have said, "You might move this sentence
from here to here," or something like that.

But mostly you were telling him
to keep the faith.
Exactly. Also, I suggested he
contact Frederick Barthelme and Rie Fortenberry at the Mississippi Review, who'd published his first serious publication, a
story called "The Rich." I said, "What about this story? Where have you sent it? Have you sent it to the
Mississippi Review?" And he said, "No,
‘cause they've already published me."

That's a good thing! [Laughter.]
So he sent it to them and they
published it and he dedicated that story to me. And then later on I helped him
meet Shannon Ravenel, who published his first book.

It seems like so many of the greatest writers of American letters have
come out of the south: Tennessee Williams, Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery
O'Connor. And, more recently, Tom Franklin, Larry Brown, Barry Hannah. All these
people whose work I deeply admire. They share something...an intimacy with place
perhaps?
It often gets explained in phrases
like that, but I think that for the moderns...well, Faulkner was a genius. But I
think he also realized early on what he could do and in contrast to the many
things that he could not do.

What do you mean by that?
Well, he was a failure as a
student. But I think with someone like Eudora Welty, who was an intelligent and
independent woman of that time, there were limited opportunities for things
that she could do. But writing, writing was one of them. And photography was
one. So I think it's tied to economics in some way, but I also think that all
of the rich and conflicted history of the South has a lot to do with it, all
the various tensions. Because literature is built on conflict. There's also the
whole war thing, the Civil War. Being the loser in that war makes us akin to
other literature-producing places—Ireland, Russia.

Reader Comments

Thank you for this opportunity to recommend an independent bookstore that is a vital part of our community.
In the early 00's, when the likes of Amazon.com and the big stores finally managed to eradicate the last of the old fashioned indies from the New Hampshire Seacoast, many thought the battle was over.
That's when RiverRun Books appeared on Commercial Alley in Portsmouth. Such good news traveled fast: a bookstore with unpredictable merchandise, merchandise you'd actually want to browse, merchandise you could believe would feed your curiosity, your thirst for something other than someone's top ten or drugstore/airport lit.
And the owner, Tom Holbrook, was totally about the local reading and business communities. There was a prominent section dedicated to local authors, and a large part of that dedicated to local poets--the area being a hotbed of the 21st century poetry Renaissance. Soon, chairs were being schlepped down from the second tier for authors' signings, book discussion groups, and poetry readings several times a month. A part of everyone's social planning--everyone I know, anyway--became a discussion of "what's going on at RiverRun this week."
Tom had the business acumen and tenacity to hold on and to flourish on Commerce Alley, and the reading community rewarded him. When he had the opportunity to move into a new location on Market Square, four blocks from his old location, a hundred people gathered and formed a bucket brigade and passed the contents of his old store to his new store. But the old space wasn't abandoned. Tom turned it into Second Run Books, a much needed used bookstore, with the same critical eye for intellectual value, with a strong appeal to those of us who can't always afford "first run" prices.
But that hasn't been the limit of Tom's commitment to the Seacoast community. He has been a leader in the "Buy Local" movement, promoting other local businesses and forming an association of businesses that make sure the members of the buying public know they have the resources to get what they wants and need while keeping their dollars in the community, where they'll do the most good for them and their neighbors.
In a time when every independent bookstore is asking itself, "How can we offer a viable alternative to the big box stores?," Tom has the answers: deep community involvement, a friendly, intelligent, techno savvy staff that actually reads and is prepared to discuss contemporary literature, the resources to chase down what you want quickly, if nothing in stock pushes your buttons, and a "clean, well lighted place" to meet with others with your interests and keep the original idea of 'the book as social glue' alive.

Julie Schoerke says...

Thank you for this warm and wonderful article about a magical place. As a book publicist, I am a huge fan and booster of independent bookstores. There are so many great book shops throughout the country. Square Books has a special place in my heart and I leap at every opportunity to travel with my author clients when we have an event in Oxford.

When fiction writer Barry Eisler heard last summer that Kepler's
Books in Menlo Park, California, would close after fifty years in
business, his first reaction was a loud expletive. His second was an
e-mail to owner Clark Kepler with an offer to help. "I used to see
those big author photos in the window…and I was working on what would
become my first novel," says Eisler, the author of the Jain Rain series
of thrillers. "My fantasies of literary success were all based on doing
book signings at Kepler's."

On the evening of October 29, more than seventy-five
people crammed into The Red Wheelbarrow, a newly opened Anglophone
bookshop, to inaugurate a reading series and celebrate two literary
magazines: Upstairs at Duroc, published at the Anglo cultural center WICE, and Pharos,
edited collectively by poet Alice Notley's workshop at the British
Institute in Paris. The enthusiastic crowd spilled onto the cobblestone
street, smoking cigarettes and craning their necks for a view of the
proceedings.